


Animals

by AHeartForStories



Series: AHeartForStories' Winter Whumperland 2020 [5]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Blood, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Confinement, Electric shocks, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III Whump, Hiccup Whump, Hurt Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Non-Con Relationship, One-Sided Relationship, Past Abuse, Past Hospitalization, Rape/Non-con Elements, Referenced - Freeform, Whump, ankle band, held captive, past trauma, shock collar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:41:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28180017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AHeartForStories/pseuds/AHeartForStories
Summary: Written for Winter Whumperland Day 5. Set in a modern AU, follows up on Day 4 'Gift'. Alone for the day, Hiccup watches a dragon documentary as he thinks back to how he and his Bud first met and contemplates why he knows his way around his abuser.
Relationships: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Stoick the Vast, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Toothless, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Valka, Ryker Grimborn & Viggo Grimborn, Viggo Grimborn & Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, Viggo Grimborn/Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III
Series: AHeartForStories' Winter Whumperland 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2053827
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	Animals

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: "Animal Attack"
> 
> As fun as this project as been, physical whump is what I enjoy writing the most. So there are two parts here that I particularly liked about writing this one-shot.
> 
> Constructive criticism is appreciated! On tagging, too!  
> Enjoy!

Out in the forest with nothing but trees and snow and as far as the eye can see, which isn't far at all, Hiccup is freezing.

He wishes he could've gotten a coat before he ran, or was already wearing one when he did, but getting one would've meant going back inside the cabin, where Viggo was, and he wouldn't have expected to see him again. And if he's seen the shovel Hiccup is using as a makeshift crutch, he'd know.

So suffering the cold it is. He'll just have to hurry it up and find the help that he needs.

If only he wasn't so frustratingly slow, but with the state of both of his feet, one broken and the other a fake, slow is his only speed available.

It makes him worry. Every few seconds he looks behind him, worried to suddenly find his abuser standing there and that is more stress than he needs right now. Getting out of this predicament alive is already difficult enough.

Every little sound makes his heart leap and his eyes search for the source, wide-eyed and useless. If only he had a little bit of moonlight to work with, at least then he could see a little. But there's a snowfall coming and that means the only thing in the sky are clouds.

The white carpet is thick enough that it hides secrets and Hiccup's left foot gets caught in a tree root he didn't see. His broken foot unable to steady him, he falls with a surprised cry and eats a faceful of snow. A big jolt of pain rushes through his nerves and he lets go of the shovel, his hands shooting to his injured limb.

"Oh, fuck!" He moans and groans, hoping the terrible pain will subside quickly. He can feel it radiate through his ankle now and he wants it gone. Not just for his comfort, but also because he needs to get going. He needs to put distance between himself and the cabin he came from.

It barely fades in the minute or two he lies on the ground and that's about as much as he can give his foot to recover. The temperatures are so low that he can't wait for much longer, so he's forced to get up. His hands, face, and ears are all numb and tingling from the cold, frost nipped, and his foot is pounding and not taking kindly to the slightest of movements. But he needs to get up, he can't stay here.

Grimacing, he takes the shovel again and somehow finds the strength to get back up to his feet. He's still groaning and the occasional swear leaves, but he makes it. Somehow, he's standing again and he breathes out deeply. His face is wet with tears, a result of the pain in his foot.

His prosthetic is no help at all in the snow, especially now with his good foot out of commission, and it's infuriating. He finally has it back with him for longer than an hour or two every day and it's still useless to him.

And to think that, before they left, he was so relieved to have it back with him. He used to believe that it would be the thing to carry him out of this situation in a way. That if he got it back, if his plan worked, he could've used it to walk away from Viggo and walk away proudly.

But he has it now and all he can do is struggle.

* * *

Surprisingly enough, while at the Grimborn house, Viggo isn't home often and neither is Ryker. Hiccup knows Viggo has a company that he's CEO of, but what Ryker is up to during the day, he has no idea.

But it matters little. One of the rules specifically for him is that he can't watch tv without permission, which he never gets, so that's what he does when they're away.

Sitting on the couch when he should be doing his endlessly long list of chores, he has a knee up as he searches between channels to find something interesting to watch. Eventually landing on a documentary about dragons, he can't help but watch it and wallow in the memory it brings him.

One would think this would be the perfect opportunity to get away. Both brothers are gone, what's stopping him from leaving? Even if the windows and doors are locked, why not just break the glass or pick one of those locks and get going?

Well, first of all, his prosthetic is missing.

They took it away from him before he first woke up in this house and they've been keeping it locked away in a safe behind a locked cabinet door. How those two expect Hiccup to do the work around the house and still do a good job with only one leg and a crutch is beyond him.

Though perhaps, that is the point. If he has to do it slowly, if he has to get it right, if he has to get it done to avoid being punished, then he's losing whole days just to his chores and that is part of what makes the list so endless. So endless and so tiring. It's another tactic to make him stay, can't escape if he's too tired to.

But Hiccup's already found the key, it was hidden inside of one of the many books in Viggo's study, where the safe also is. And he's cracked the code through patience and a good hearing. Unfortunately, he still can't just take it and leave.

This house is surrounded by unseen walls he can't break through. Those infernal invisible fences are a thing because there's an ankle band around his ankle, hidden by his pants.

It's not a monitoring device like the ones often given to criminals who are on house arrest, they won't be given a painful electric shock every time they try to leave the house. Hiccup's does and it's been confining him to the inside for as long as he's been upstairs. it's a shock collar, except it goes around his ankle. As someone who can go stir crazy easily, it is a maddening thing.

He wasn't always allowed upstairs, or rather, he wasn't always allowed on the ground floor and up like this. He used to stay in the basement, like you'd see on tv or hear from other stories like his. That's where he first woke up after he was taken. In a way, he's actually relieved he gets to see sunlight and the yard outside.

But on the first day that they could "trust him enough" to let him up, let him see natural light again for the first time in much too long, they also told him what the ankle band was for. He'll never forget that day.

* * *

_"Let's call it a safety precaution." Viggo had told him, speaking in such a way as if it's completely normal to put a shock collar on a human being. It's already inhuman to put them on animals._

_He's seen some on dragons before. When his mother and her team rescued them and brought them to her sanctuary, he'd sometimes see these collars around their necks and it sickened him everytime. To think that they put one on him..._

_"Would you care for a demonstration?" From the second that they'd met, Hiccup had Ryker pinned for a bully. Someone who would take enjoyment out of someone else's misery and that offer only backed his observation up._

_"I'd prefer not to." Hiccup remembers being quiet that day, exhausted in every possible way after the time spent in darkness. He'd lost weight, too, not good for someone who was already as lean as he was._

_"Ah, but that's no fun!" Ryker, however, insisted on it, grabbing Hiccup by his upper arm and dragging him towards the front door with no protest from his younger brother._

_"W-wait, no-" Hiccup didn't have the strength to fight back, too weakened, and then the front door was opened and he'd been thrown outside for a test run._

_The second he hit the front porch and the steps leading up to it, the ankle band activitated immediately with a few beeps. Terrible surges of electricity ran up his body from his right ankle, setting fire to his nerves. He doesn't remember much, just his body convulsing on the ground, muscles tensing uncontrollably, and the want to scream, but being unable to with his jaws clenched so tightly on one another. He can't remember breathing either._

_Does it take minutes? Or has it been only seconds of him writhing on the ground, silently pleading for his suffering to stop? There mustn't be any neighbors nearby or they would have questions. But with the press of a button, the surges end and Hiccup is left sobbing and shaking._

_"You couldn't end his suffering just a little sooner?" Viggo asked when he finally joined them outside and stuffed the little remote in his pocket, his tone not fitting his words as it sounded quite uncaring. If anything, he's annoyed he had to be the one to press the button. They both have it and it can make the shocks start and stop at will. Ryker will come to abuse that one whenever he feels like it._

_"I just figured a practice run would it through his thick skull," Ryker replies, feeling quite satisfied with the display._

_"He's only just arrived, Ryker, it'd be a shame to kill him already." They both looked down at him, watched Hiccup as he panted and lies motionless on the front porch. His body trembled in the aftermath and the tears silently rolled down his face._

* * *

He won't think about that line again until the trip to the mountains, but for the moment, he watches the documentary and pushes the memory of the ankle band to the deepest corners of his mind. Instead, he should pick apart the dragon facts that aren't quite as accurate as he'd like.

Now is not the time to think, now is the time for dragons.

And then a bit about the elusive Night Fury comes on and his mother's sanctuary for dragons is mentioned. This particular species of dragons is hard to find and that makes the sanctuary's specimen all the more important.

Hiccup knows that particular individual very well. He's the one he lost his leg to, the reason why he has a prosthetic that can be taken away like a toy is taken from a disobedient child. As if having a working leg isn't a basic right.

After his parents' divorce, his mother came to live in the sanctuary full-time. And since she had their son for the weekends, Stoick had him during the weeks for school, which meant Hiccup sometimes lived amongst the dragons as well.

It happened one day when he was 15-years-old, an injured juvenile Night Fury had been rescued and was brought to the sanctuary for treatment with every intention to let him go afterward. That is, until they saw the severity of his injured tailfin and realized he would never fly again. That was before a certain someone invented a prosthetic for him.

They didn't know his story, they still don't, not in its entirety. But upon waking up and seeing nothing except for humans, he lashed out. And the closest one standing nearest to him was Hiccup.

The leg was still there when they managed to sedate the dragon and call in a helicopter from overseas, having done everything they could to stop him from bleeding out. The sanctuary was on an island without a town or even a village, so the nearest hospital was the one on the mainland, in New New Berk. The next day, the leg was gone and so was his mother. She'd been sent away by his father, who was outraged that she let something like this happen under her watch.

In the weeks afterwards, Valka would completely lose custody of Hiccup in a court battle for him while he recovered. Nothing she said could persuade Stoick, or the court, to change their minds.

Hiccup never blamed his mother or the dragon for the leg he lost or for the terrible scarring on the lower right side of his back. Something Viggo had once looked at and promptly decided should be surgically removed in the far future.

He despises that decision more than he could ever even dislike Toothless for doing this to him. Toothless was scared, hurt, and acted out because of that. And with how little they know about Night Furies, they couldn't have known how fast or how slow his metabolism would take care of the sedatives. Every dragon reacts differently to them.

Once his stump healed, his physiotherapy was done, and he'd made his own prosthetic with Gobber's help, months had come and gone. When he was about 16 and a half, he demanded his father to be allowed back on the sanctuary and see that dragon.

Stoick had told him no, of course, but when had that ever stopped him before?

Toothless had recognized him instantly and what Hiccup saw was guilt and a need to shrink away. In the months there, he'd come to realize these humans weren't out to hurt him and he'd nearly killed the most defenseless out of all of them, a juvenile like him.

Imagine his surprise when that human, that would turn out to be his best and closest friend, came at him not with anger, but with a fish as a good gesture. Their relationship only went uphill from there.

He remembers screaming, remembers the ferocious beast tearing away at him, remembers, the blood and the pain of a leg that was quite literally hanging by a thread at that point. And then there were the nights when he would wake up crying and his father would come in to console him. It's part of why he wanted to see the dragon, to be rid of those nightmares as he refused to fear what he's loved all his life.

But those times, he won't look back at them in horror as he probably will look back on his time with Viggo.

His time downstairs in particular.

Before he realizes it, Hiccup sits on the leather couch, knee up to his chest, and feeling like he wants to cry. He just wants to see his Bud again. Toothless doesn't like humans very much, but he loves him as much as he does him.

After bonding with his Bud, and a lecture from his father that went in one ear and out the other, Hiccup continued to work with the dragons his mother and her personnel looked after. He garnered skills with them that no one but his own mother had developed before him and it seemed like his goal in life was to work with them.

His thoughts take a sudden turn.

Maybe that's why Hiccup is so good at quelling Viggo, he's used to dealing with animals.

Except when a Monstrous Nightmare is angry, it could be suffering from a toothache that keeps him from eating, starving him for days until the cause is found. When a Gronckle comes to a human post to wreck stuff, it might be because she ate something she shouldn't have and feels worryingly sick, this her way of calling for help. When a Nadder is acting up, it might be a spine that sits wrong and hurts her.

Dragons can be angry and have a million reasons why they are and that means there are a million ways to help them out. It's their job to figure out what is wrong and take care of the problem. Hiccup is exceptional at this.

But Viggo, for all his smarts and his complexes, wants only one thing from Hiccup and that makes him easier to quell. That is, if Hiccup can beat him to the punch. Literally.

Funny and ironic, how they would put a shock collar of some kind on Hiccup when the beast out of the two of them isn't him.

But he shouldn't have to and, unlike with his dragons, he doesn't want to either. That makes him angry.

But what can he do? The police haven't come for him yet and neither have his friends or family, if they even know where to look. Hiccup doesn't even know what address this house is situated at and it's not like he can go outside and intercept the mail before Viggo or Ryker can. And they're so quick to dispose of the envelopes, too. Ryker even stares him in the eye with a glint of satisfaction as he burns the envelopes above the sink each time he gets their hands on them.

And the only people who really know about Viggo are Astrid and Heather. Would they think to look into him?

Hiccup looks towards the direction of the study, where not only his prosthetic is kept under lock and key for "safekeeping", but also where Viggo's computer is.

It's the 13th of December, the day after the party. He can't go outside, there is no phone to use, no neighbors to rely on, no housekeeper to scheme with, but those party guests from the night before have given him an idea. It's the first one he's had since being allowed up the stairs.

He's ashamed of how long it took him, but his mind was simply... preoccupied with other things.

If he can just get onto that computer then he has something to work with. A way to get rid of this shock collar that he doesn't dare tamper with like he would with other objects would be great. What would be even greater is something that he can use against Viggo, maybe something having to do with those party guests.

If he can just get onto that computer, he might find something that will be his ticket out of here, and he won't have to worry about being treated like a child anymore, like a toy, like an object, like an animal.

The one who will be treated like an animal then will, hopefully, be Viggo.


End file.
